When David Dugoff and Vicky Bor purchased the 11,250-square-foot lot in Chevy Chase, Md., that was to become their permanent mailing address, they considered renovating and expanding the decaying cottage that sat on the site, but ultimately determined that dismantling it, calling in a recycling company to salvage its parts, and starting over was a smarter move.
“We did explore the possibility of remodeling the existing house, but the foundation was not located in a way that would work, plus it was 80 or 90 years old, and we really couldn't rely on it for another 90 years,” says DuGoff, who served as his own general contractor.
It's concerns like these that often provide the rationale for teardowns, be they about structural decay, rampant mold, energy inefficiency, or the prohibitive cost of bringing an old house up to code. Sometimes there are just too many hurdles to justify overhauling the old structure.
But those who have ventured into infill territory will testify that these tricky projects can be rife with other obstacles, from NIMBY resistance to design police, to zoning and permitting. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, more than 300 communities in 33 states have taken steps in recent years to thwart teardown development by establishing conservation districts, stalling demolition approvals, or imposing height, setback, and lot coverage restrictions. To wit: It wasn't long after DuGoff received the green light to build his own house that the mayor of Chevy Chase issued a moratorium on new construction in response to citizen complaints about McMansions popping up like oversized mushrooms in their neighborhoods.
DuGoff narrowly avoided what could have become a protracted waiting game in the quest to rebuild. But he and his wife also diffused the popular notion that all teardowns are evil by serving up a well-proportioned house that respects the scale of the street. Read on for details about their project and four others whose inspired designs generated nary a protest from the neighbors.
On the Level
A fresh homage to Frank Lloyd Wright wins favor in the D.C. 'burbs.
Many a well-meaning tear-down builder has incited ire in Chevy Chase, Md., even while honoring the neighborhood's venerable architectural styles. The problem hasn't been with the interpretation, per se, but rather with what happens to classical forms when they are put on steroids.
“Most of the older homes here are early 20th-century colonial or Shingle-style residences, whose gabled forms emphasize the vertical dimension,” observes architect Mark Hughes. Increase square footage and those elements grow proportionately. Suddenly you're casting shadows on the neighbors' sun porches and prized azaleas.
Make no bones about it, owners David DuGoff and Vicky Bor wanted more living space when they razed an old bungalow to build their dream home in this posh area just north of Washington. But they avoided antagonizing the neighbors by embracing an architectural genre that is quintessentially low profile. Their 3,800-square-foot, Prairie-style home is large by local standards, but with its hipped roofs and broad footprint, it “spreads across the site instead of reaching for the skies,” Hughes says.
This casual, reclining position is accentuated by a wide mahogany entry door by Simpson (elongated with shoji-style sidelights), 12-inch Norman brick exterior masonry with a horizontal rake finish, cast stone string courses, and standard-sized windows organized in horizontal rows. Projecting one-story wings and bays, built-in planters, and attached garden walls soften the two-story mass by breaking the house down into smaller, human-scaled components.
Inside, the spatial emphasis is on shorter ceiling heights and long sight lines, which force perspective toward outdoor views. Horizontal runs of cherry trim span interior walls and turn corners, unifying an open plan in which living spaces maintain a continuous flow.
“Now that we've been here a while, we can testify that the house really works,” DuGoff says. “We can have a party for 100 or for two couples, and either way we are very comfortable in the space.” And the neighbors are comfortable, too.
Project: DuGoff Bor Residence, Chevy Chase, Md.; Size: 3,800 square feet; General contractor: Homeowners; Builder: Ebner Construction, Wheaton, Md.; Architect: GTM Architects, Bethesda, Md.
Sea Through
A waterfront retreat on Puget Sound packs a tiny lot to the max.
The assignment wasn't exactly a piece of cake: a postage-stamp–sized lot (measuring 45 by 60 feet) in a flood plain with site requirements for a self-contained septic system and drain field. Some builders would have walked away, but Holbeck Construction teamed with the architects at Pelletier + Schaar to create this jewel-box of a home in a rural area of Washington state whose street grid predates the invention of the automobile.
Measuring less than 2,000 square feet, the house is as compact as a Swiss army knife, with transitional architecture that complements neighboring homes. Craftsman-style elements such as heavy barge boards, brackets, and shingle siding with double narrow-wide exposure reference the modest cabin that once occupied the spot in this former logging community. But the replacement structure also neatly incorporates contemporary elements such as glass and steel.
Spatial economies crop up everywhere, including a one-car garage, a powder room tucked under the stairs, and a crawl space transformed into a wine cellar. “Using staggered levels allowed us to utilize a lot of cavity space,” explains architect David Pelletier, noting that all main living areas are raised 2 feet above grade to meet flood elevation requirements. A slight ramp leading to the garage bridges a hidden drain field in the front yard, the position of which was determined by setback requirements and the soil.
Despite its diminutive size, the house feels plenty roomy thanks to 9-foot ceilings and large expanses of glass framing views of the water. An intimate front courtyard, wrap-around decking (made of recycled plastic), and breezy balconies play an integral role in drawing connections to the outdoors. “In tight spaces, it helps if you can gesture to the environment outside to expand the feeling of spaciousness,” Pelletier says. Every room in the house has a view, save the master closet and second-floor media room.
“This house happened before the sustainability movement really accelerated, but it ended up being a pretty sustainable structure,” he observes. “The owners would have done a bigger house, but they loved the property here. Now they're glad the house isn't very big, because it's easier to maintain and easier to heat.”
Project: Meade Residence, Camano Island, Wash.; Size: 2,000 square feet; Builder: Holbeck Construction and Design, Stanwood, Wash.; Architect: Pelletier + Schaar, Stanwood; Interior designer: Schoener's Interiors, Lynnwood, Wash.
Urbane Infill
Chicago embraces the revival of a century-old residential style.
Following the great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city adopted stringent ordinances requiring that homes be built with stone or other non-combustible materials. Not being situated on municipal land, however, the community of Lakeview quickly became a boomtown for shoddy, non-regulated construction, populated mostly by small multifamily buildings and worker cottages. By the end of the 20th century, many of those structures, which had been patched up over the years with aluminum or asphalt siding, had reached the end of their lifespan and became prime targets for teardowns.
The 5,210-square-foot row house built by GVP Development at 3311 Lakewood Avenue stands as a proud testament to the transformation that is now in motion in this desirable neighborhood near Wrigley Field. Designed in the spirit of the grand Beaux-Arts mansions that arose in America's great cities from the late 1880s to the mid-1920s, the stately home signals a newfound permanence with exterior walls of brick and Indiana limestone, copper dormers, and slate roof. And its historic inferences don't end with the façade. Inside, the floor plan revives the old school concept of a “piano nobile,” placing the main living spaces on a second floor that is slightly elevated above street level.
Allegiance to historic antecedents dictated a sunken garden and lower-level foyer for the four-story structure, although placing these spaces below grade also ensured compliance with a strict building height limit of 38 feet. “What many of our competitors have done instead is to bring an outdoor stoop up to that main floor, but then you have to carve out space for the entry hall, closets, and interior stair access, and what's left is this dinky little parlor-scale living room,” observes Jeff Goulette, a partner in the architecture firm Sullivan Goulette Wilson.
Making the plan work required a side-yard variance allowing the house to be a foot and a half wider than code, but approval was fairly easy to obtain, given the project's historic bent. “Chicago is a well-spring of modern architecture, but it's also got a traditional, conservative side,” Goulette says. “We strive to work very honestly in that language without cartooning it or distressing the proportions to put our tweak on it.”
That diligence has paid off . The architect and developer have since collaborated on a dozen similar houses in the same neighborhood.
Project: 3311 Lakewood Avenue, Chicago; Size: 5,210 square feet; Builder/Developer: GVP Development, Chicago; Architect: Sullivan Goulette Wilson, Chicago
Slim Fit
Permit-ready designs expedite infill development in Oregon's biggest city.
Subdividing old lots in established neighborhoods has become common practice in Portland, Ore., as in many other urban locales where land is at a premium. But when citizen complaints about lackluster new construction became louder than a grumble, city officials decided to do something proactive and launched Living Smart, a design competition soliciting ideas for a better use of the typical subdivided, 25-foot-wide lot. The goal was to cultivate a few good plans that could be pre-approved and put on a fast track for development, with a diminished risk of public backlash.
Fast forward to the two slender residences now standing side-by-side on Knapp Street, on a lot once occupied by a single home. At $319,000 a pop, their price tags are affordable by market-rate standards. The neighbors like them. And get this: Their plans came permit-ready with a 50 percent discount on development fees—a perk that allowed builder/developer Jack Wagnon to avoid the quagmire of red tape that so often holds infill projects hostage.
Designed by the Berkeley, Calif.–based architectural team of Roxana Vargas and Trent Greenan, the tidy three-bedroom, two-bath houses embody one of two prototypes selected by the city as a model of what skinny infill could and should look like. (The other winning design, which was built elsewhere in the city, was by Portland-based architect Bryan Higgins.) With their exposed cedar outriggers, heavy timbering, and deeply recessed windows, the Knapp Street homes speak a dialect that is very Pacific Northwest. They are built green to Portland's Earth Advantage specifications and have an energy-efficiency rating that exceeds Oregon code by 50 percent.
“It's a very efficient plan,” says Vargas of her firm's 1,516-square-foot, front-loaded garage configuration, which expands to 1,700 square feet when the garage is swapped out for a home office. “An advantage to the home being so narrow is that you have more building perimeter to get light into the interiors. This home has more windows than what you would typically find in a house of this square footage.”
In addition to the windows, custom cedar garage doors, which cost about $2,700 each, were the other big ticket item on these otherwise cost-conscious dwellings. Portland has no alleys, so upgrades to this prominent front elevation feature (made even more apparent by the home's slender profile) were justified, Vargas says. Easements allowed both garage doors and shear wall margins to be narrower than standard. “It was a big deal to get those approved, but the city ended up being really happy with the end result.”
Project: Living Smart Homes, Portland, Ore.; Size: 1,516 square feet (garage option) or 1,700 square feet (office option); Builder: Prairie View Homes, Portland; Architect: Vargas Greenan Architecture, Berkeley, Calif.
Beachy Keen
An ocean-side vacation home blends fun with function.
The decision to bulldoze the ranch house that previously slouched on this narrow, shaded lot wasn't a tough one. With its dingy wood paneling and creeping structural rot, it was depressing, borderline hazardous, and not exactly coastal in feel.
Figuring out what to build in its place, however, was a little more complicated for builder/developer Ralph Picard, given the stringent architectural restrictions governing new construction in Rehoboth Beach, Del., a popular summer getaway spot for the Baltimore-D.C. crowd. City ordinances limited the allowable floor area ratio to 70 percent of the lot size, capped the height at 35 feet (with a maximum 2 ½ stories), and imposed limits on total bedroom and bath count. The project also mandated the preservation of several old-growth trees.
Picard, who typically builds on spec and markets his coastal properties as vacation rentals under the name Resort Pointe Custom Homes, has cultivated a niche following for Caribbean-style houses bearing cotton candy paint colors and crisp white trim. But in this quiet, wooded neighborhood of mid-century homes and classic beach cottages, some restraint was in order.
The resulting 3,366-square-foot abode, designed by Becker Morgan Group, manages to straddle both worlds. Classic cedar shingles, wide trim, and tailored gables share a resemblance with nearby houses, but then whimsy inserts itself by way of swooping roof lines, ocular windows, chunky columns, over-scaled gas lanterns, and a custom copper pennant flag rising from the cupola.
“Once we met the city's architectural criteria, we had room to play. The challenge was putting 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag,” says architect Christopher Pattey. “The builder asked us to create the largest interior space possible in what amounts to a mini-hotel (it sleeps 12). But this large program had to be disguised on the outside with a façade of lesser presence.” The solution? Stepped wall plates and undulating roof lines create the illusion of a much smaller home.
Project: Henlopen House, Rehoboth Beach, Del.; Size: 3,366 square feet; Builder/Developer/ Interior designer: Resort Pointe Custom Homes, Selbyville, Del.; Architect: Becker Morgan Group, Salisbury, Md.